Epistle
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: "She won't like that injury part." "She never does." Turns out York's journal entries weren't the only Freelancer logs Epsilon recovered. Set shortly before Carolina's reappearance in s12.


"Shit," Epsilon says, and then, even less helpfully, "No, wait!"

Carolina stops dead. This is, in later analysis, how the sniper's bullet misses her heart. What she notices first is the way her muscles protest the speed unit's emergency shutoff, the crackle of acid through her thighs and calves. She stumbles.

What she notices second is the blood in her mouth.

"Shit," Epsilon says again, his voice splitting and wavering. "Carolina, you gotta _move_."

Her HUD lights up with targeting information, a suggested trajectory. She fires her pistol along the dotted line, watches as the ricochet takes out the final support beam of the scaffolding, bringing down the sniper's nest.

"Shit." A pause, then, "Okay. We're good."

Carolina's leaning against the wall behind her, sinking to the ground, spitting blood into her rebreather. She's having trouble catching her breath, but the first application of biofoam is already numbing the punched-gut shock of the wound. Single sniper round, entry through the weaker armor of the bodysuit, underarm into chest cavity. No exit wound.

She coughs, clears her throat. "_Jesus_, Epsilon. What the hell was that?"

"_That_ was a fucking asshole who didn't show up on my trackers, what the _fuck_. How many of these dicks have cloaking tech?"

He's panicking. Which is great timing, because her vision's wavering and blurring and she's just been shot and, oh yes, she's sitting on the floor of a warehouse operated by hostile space pirates. She shifts, feels something pull in her chest, and coughs again.

"Fuck," he says. "Stop moving. Bullet's lodged in a rib, your lung's all fucked up. Just hold still. Should take a couple hours for the healing unit to fix it."

She lets out a held breath, shakily. "We don't have a couple hours." Inhale; something sharp, painful, but it clears. Exhale. "Someone's gonna be in here soon to check on these guys."

"Yeah, well, the alternative's you bleeding out two feet from the exit. Besides, I'm not picking up anyone on scanners."

She stops focusing on her breathing long enough to shoot him a glare. She knows he can see it through the helmet.

"Shut up," he says. "_As far as I can tell_, nobody's gonna crash the party. Okay? So just hang tight."

She rests her head back against the wall; the helmet connects with a reassuring _thud_.

"Oh," he says, "and don't pass out or anything. We might need to get you on your feet in a hurry."

"Bossy," she says. Her eyelids are already drooping. "Stims?"

"Not unless you want to speed your heart up so you bleed out faster than the healing unit can patch you up. I mean, hey. If that's your thing."

"Huh." She coughs, hiking her arm up to cradle her ribs. "Gonna have a problem, then."

"What, the joy of my company isn't enough to keep you awake?" A pause, and then, softer, "Carolina?"

"Still here."

"Fuck. Hang on." His holographic body flickers and disappears.

Carolina stares up at the ceiling. Okay. The adrenaline's finally starting to fade, but its wake is dull and groggy. Okay. Awake. Right.

She brings up her helmet's playback of the battle, watches as it highlights the precise times she acted outside Epsilon's recommended battle plan. Huh. Four deviations, this time. Two of them are improvisations that actually improved on his calculations, which isn't really something that's supposed to be happening when the guy making the calculations is literally made of numbers. The other two are careless mistakes on her part. About par for the course, lately. They haven't exactly been at the top of their game.

A needle in her armor's medical suite injects her with another dose of biofoam, and she shudders straight into another coughing fit as it seeps in, stanching bloodflow. Right. Par for the course.

"Hah!" Epsilon's voice makes her jump, and she clenches a fist over her chest instinctively. "I've been meaning to finish cracking these files."

"What—" Carolina starts, but a holographic figure appears in front of her before she can finish the question.

Said holographic figure is wearing white armor but no helmet, staring pensively at her. Said holographic figure is cocking his head to one side. Said holographic figure is meticulously waxing his impressive mustache.

"Um," says Carolina.

The man sniffs, flaring his nostrils, and digs at a stubborn flyaway hair, smoothing it into place with evident pride. He's got a round face, a washed-out complexion. Heavy-lidded eyes give him a permanent look of vague concern. But she's seen him put a single bullet through two skulls from an impossible distance, all without interrupting a truly awful string of puns.

"Wyoming," she says. "Epsilon, what—"

Another figure fades in behind him, gradually, as though the automatic vid pickup's reluctant to notice him. Tall, lanky, blue armor, also sans helmet. Dark skin crisscrossed with paler scars. A flash of a grin. "Reg, I think you'll find you've hit the 'record' button by accident, there. All broadcasts are automatically backed up to the central server, you know."

Wyoming squints at Carolina across several years and an unfathomable distance.

"Ah," he says. "Bugger." The vid ends.

Epsilon flickers to life beside her. "Thought so!"

"What," Carolina says, slowly, carefully, "was that?"

"Yeah, well, you know how I picked up those journal entries a while back? Also got a bunch of other junk along with them. Turns out the other Freelancers' personal logs were archived, too. There's some good stuff in here. It's movie night. Stay awake. Hang on."

He disappears again before Carolina can decide whether or not she wants him to stop.

A moment passes. Another face wavers into focus.

It's South, looking impossibly young, beaming in a lopsided grin that Carolina's not sure she's ever seen before. "Agent South Dakota, codename The Fucking Greatest."

A quiet voice, apparently outside the vid pickup. "_South_. This is an official report."

"Yeah, so I'm making my title as The Fucking Greatest official. Twenty fucking dudes, North. All me. Single-handed. I'm The Fucking Greatest."

"Jesus Christ," North mutters. He's standing at the edge of the vid's range so that his holographic form keeps flickering in and out of existence. One hand's flat against his face, but Carolina can see the grin pulling at the corner of his mouth. "I'm gonna hear from the Director about this one."

"Nah," South says. "Nobody listens to this shit. Right? So what happened was, official report here, my _big brother _got totally surrounded because he's a dumbass sniper and gets tunnel vision. So I stepped in and fucked shit up."

"I didn't need your help, South. I had it under control."

South's grin widens, and she raises a hand to point at North. The empty bottle, balanced by its neck between her fingers, explains a lot. "See what it feels like, motherfucker?"

"All right, all right. You done here?"

"You're missing an important part of the mission debrief," says a third voice. "You know. The bit where I had to charge in and save _your _ass?"

Carolina's breathing hitches.

Agent Connecticut leans into view, wearing a smirk that Carolina _definitely_ remembers. "You getting all that? The part where I had to salvage the mission after these idiots dug themselves into a deep hole?"

"Eat shit and die," South says, fondly.

Connie reaches over and digs her fingers through South's hair. "You gonna dye this or what?" Connie's own hair is longer than Carolina remembers, and a few shades lighter. "Thought you said you were going pink."

North sways into frame again, looking faintly amused. "She's weird about her hair. Never dyed it when we were kids. I bet she chickens out."

South's hesitation is minute; Carolina only catches it because she's looking for it. "Fuck it," she says. "Let's do it tonight."

"You've managed to get hair dye on a military vessel," North says, flatly. It's not a question.

"Nah," says South. "But Connie's got some. I bet."

Connie shrugs. Her smirk's gone into overdrive.

"Then fuck it," says South again. "Let's go."

"South," North says. "This is an official log. At least sign off."

"Sure," says South, and very solemnly and officially raises two middle fingers.

The vid cuts out.

"Aw, this is great!" Epsilon says. He flickers to life beside her. "There's hours of footage here!"

"Stop," Carolina says, softly.

"All sorts of— wait, what?"

"Stop. They're dead. Don't..." She coughs, curses, clenches an arm over her ribs. "Don't dig them up like this. It seems wrong."

Epsilon pauses, and for a second the neural link is strong enough that she feels his uncertainty. Then, in a tone of voice that's uncharacteristically bitter, he says, "Never say goodbye, huh?"

She doesn't rise to the bait. "Something like that."

"You're not like him, you know," he says. His hologram flickers. His voice wavers. Carolina holds her breath. "It's okay to want to remember. Sometimes. I mean, they were your friends. It's like they're... a part of you, and you've just gotta. You've just gotta keep them around sometimes." He shrugs, solidifies, his voice losing the eerie echo, and only then does she exhale. "If you don't remember them, who will?"

She tips her head back against the wall again, stares up at the ceiling. She remembers South giving a sitrep, once, in the heat of battle. Repeats her words, softly. "Shit's pretty fucked."

When she looks back down, it's straight into Maine's eyes.

She sucks in a breath, fingers clenching into fists.

He's in civvies, workout clothes that don't quite fit him right. Clothes never seem to fit him right. He's got stubbled hair and a scraggly beard starting to grow in. There's a scar running along the side of his head, but his throat is unscathed.

He looks, she thinks, utterly miserable.

Carolina takes a mental step back, evaluates her own reaction. It feels like probing a loose tooth with her tongue. She's not... frightened, beyond the initial jump-scare. The man sitting hunched on his bunk bears no resemblance to the burning behemoth in her nightmares.

The Meta was many things. Maine was only ever one.

Slowly, Maine raises his eyes to look directly at her again. Then he growls out a sigh and looks away. "No."

"Okay," says a muffled voice from somewhere offscreen. "But have you considered, instead: yes?"

The corner of Maine's mouth twitches. "_No._"

Improbably, a sock rises slowly into view. A grey sock, encasing a foot, connected presumably to a leg somewhere offscreen. Carolina watches in fascination as it continues in its slow but inevitable trajectory, finally nudging Maine in the side of the head. He glowers, stoic in the face of this indignity.

"C'mon. Director said you haven't been recording your logs. It's protocol, Maine."

Maine swats at the offending foot. "Go away."

"Nah, I'm good."

The vid finally identifies the foot as belonging to a second person and widens the frame to encompass the rest of his body in the holo-feed.

Wash is flopped back on Maine's bunk, hands buried in the front pocket of an oversized Grifball hoodie. He's wearing, for some reason, his helmet. He has the hood, for some reason, drawn up over his helmet.

He looks patently ridiculous.

He's also shifted from slowly kicking Maine in the head to slowly kicking Maine in the side, ignoring a grumbled warning. "C'mon. Just get it over with, you big baby. Record your amazing exploits for posterity. They finally got some fresh fruit in at the mess, and I've got important plans to eat it until I puke, so. You better hurry up."

Maine gives a long, drawn-out sigh, shoots a sidelong glance at Wash, and squares up with the camera again.

He pauses, possibly for dramatic effect. "Today we did good," he says, and reaches out to stop the vid feed just as Wash says, "Oh, come _on—_"

The recording stops. They disappear.

Carolina's breathing is too shallow, too quick. "Sorry," Epsilon says, immediately. He's echoing again, something weird and childlike underlying his words. "Sorry, I didn't think about what that would mean, seeing Maine before he became the Meta." _Seeing Wash before he became what you made him_, Carolina translates mentally. Epsilon flickers. "Fuck. I've got such a fucking headache."

Carolina coughs. "Poor you," she says.

"Ah. Right." He flickers. "Hey, don't fucking die on me here."

"Wasn't planning on it," she says. Her eyelids are drooping again. "Just tired."

"Carolina. Shit. _Carolina._"

She jerks, sucking in a painful breath, but her head's already slumping toward her chest again. There's probably... there's probably a chance nobody's gonna find her soon, anyway. Might as well let the healing unit work—

"Carolina."

It's a different voice, warm and amused. She jolts awake, slams her eyes closed, breathes harsh and fast through her mouth.

"Carolina, c'mon. This has gotta go on record or nobody's gonna believe it."

She hears her own voice, distant, strange. "York, you can't use the official logs for—"

"I think you'll find I can absolutely use the official logs."

Carolina opens her eyes.

York is leaning into the vid pickup. His hair's standing on end, like he's just been combing his fingers through it. The scar on the side of his face is still vivid, still healing. "Look, you've got all these accomplishments. Lemme have this one."

"Oh my god, York." Past-Carolina is still off-screen; there's a clink of bottles from somewhere in the background. "It's not an accomplishment. Everyone else went to bed a million years ago."

"Make it official and I'll shut up about it?"

She pauses, then leans into the vid pickup, and for a moment Carolina is startled at how _tired_ she looked, even back then. "Okay, yeah. It's true. There."

"What's true?" York says, smirking. "Make it official."

Her voice shifts seamlessly from annoyance to amusement. "Oh, you want official? Oh, my mistake. I, Agent Carolina, do solemnly swear that Agent York is a great big dork—"

"Hey, wait—"

"—who just happens to have gotten lucky at one, I repeat, _one_ game of poker. One. And he may, on this one singular occasion, have managed to outbluff me. It will never happen again as long as he lives, so he's clinging to this achievement as a pathetic endorsement of his skill as a player."

York's trying very, very hard not to laugh. He's failing miserably. "Ouch."

"And furthermore—"

The holograms vanish. Epsilon flares, red-tinged, next to her. "Shit. Someone's coming."

Carolina wraps an arm around herself, reaches the other hand back to scrabble against the wall behind her, trying to brace herself. "How much time?"

"Not much," he says, grimly. "Not enough for you to finish healing, that's for sure. Can you stand? I've been working on a way out of here."

"You tell me," Carolina says, but shoves herself to her feet anyway on wobbly legs. Sparks dance and pop before her eyes, and she sways, falling heavily against the wall, steadying herself with an effort. She spits blood, again. "Epsilon—"

"Marker's on your HUD. Just get moving. You'll have time to heal up after this."

Right. One foot in front of the other. Carolina staggers forward, feeling something shift in her chest with the first jarring step. The medical suite in her armor responds by pumping nearly its entire store of painkillers into her at once, and she falls against the wall again as the floor seems to shift beneath her.

"We gotta _go_," Epsilon says, his voice cracking, splintering. "Carolina!"

"I'm okay," she says. Pushes forward. "I'm okay. Just show me the way."

She stumbles through a nightmarish array of hallways, doubles back when guards start converging on her position. Follows Epsilon's waypoint markers through a series of identical corridors. Eventually the concrete under her feet is replaced with dirt, with grass, with underbrush. When she pauses in a futile attempt to catch her breath, she leans against trees, not walls.

"Okay," Epsilon says, finally. "Okay. You can stop here. You're safe."

Carolina stops.

She _stops_. She lets her legs give out beneath her, makes no effort to catch herself, hits the ground with a jarring impact that sends pain spiking through her chest. It _hurts_. It fades. She's in a clearing, somewhere in a forest. Her visor presses into the dirt.

"—_lina_! Carolina!" Epsilon's voice, fading in through the ringing in her ears, is high and panicked. "Shit. _Shit_. C'mon, keep breathing. Healing unit's gonna stabilize you, but it'll take a minute to spin up, here. Just stay awake. Just a little longer."

Carolina is thinking about York's hair, Wash's helmet, Maine's stare, Connie's smirk, North's laugh, South's smile. She's thinking about Wyoming's fucking mustache. "S'okay," she says. "Not your fault."

"Damn right it's not my fault," he says. "Stupid melodramatic Freelancer _fucks_. Stay awake for one minute. _One minute_. That's all I need. Gah. Hang on."

Carolina drifts.

"Hey, kid," says a voice, soft and distant and breaking at the edges.

Carolina drags her head up from the dirt, sees a flickering form in full armor. Black armor. She doesn't feel much of anything, really, about this apparition.

Tex is standing stiffly, uncomfortably, halfway to attention, nowhere near at-ease. "Kid, I... this is weird. This is weird, but I gotta try. We're busting in to get the Alpha. We're trying for a rescue."

Carolina watches her shift her weight, clench her hands into fists, balance on the balls of her feet. She seems very far away.

"I want to pull you out, too, but I know you won't believe me. I know you have no reason to trust me. And—" She pauses, lifts one hand in an abortive motion toward the implant site at the back of her neck. "I might have other priorities when I see you next. Things shift. They don't— They don't stay the same, in my head. It gets confusing. There are so many iterations... Kid, I'm leaving you this message in case I fail."

She half-turns, checking what looks like a computer monitor. "I'm tying this in with your biometrics so only you can access it, piggybacking it on some of the old log files so nobody else can try. It's a long shot. Might be it's the only chance I get."

A pause. A soft sigh. "Things are so fucked up, kid. I'm sorry. There are... things we have to do. Things I have to do. Responsibilities. But I'll do everything I can to save you. I promise."

She reaches out, as though to deactivate the vid feed, then hesitates. Stands back again. "Hey," she says. "Just in case I don't see you. Goodbye, kid. Goodbye."

She pauses again, then reaches out and kills the feed.

"It's okay," Epsilon says, in a soft, distant voice. "You're okay, Carolina. Healing unit's back online. You need seven or eight hours, but you'll be back on your feet in the morning. Get some sleep."

Carolina closes her eyes, sighs out a breath, and for once, just for once, the nightmares don't find her.


End file.
